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Increasing commercialization, the growing popularity of small satellites, and human spaceflight are factors that will drive the launch industry and result in production of a projected 759 launch vehicles worth $67 billion over the next 10 years.
Orbital Sciences Corp. will buy a new rocket engine to replace the surplus Russian engines tentatively implicated in the Oct. 28 failure of an Antares launch vehicle with a load of cargo for the International Space Station.
On July 1, Johann-Dietrich Woerner will begin a four-year term as the next director general of the European Space Agency. He is currently chairman of the executive board of the German Aerospace Center.
The request for information lists several generic possibilities, including beaming power between orbiting spacecraft, from an orbiting spacecraft to a “planetary asset,” and between fixed and mobile assets on a planetary surface.
Orbital Sciences Corp. will buy directly from Russia’s NPO Energomash a new rocket engine with a long heritage to replace the surplus Russian engines tentatively implicated in the Oct. 28 failure of an Antares launch vehicle with a load of cargo for the International Space Station.
Delays in current launcher development are not deterring Chinese space industry managers from planning a Moon rocket. They aim to put a rover on Mars around 2020, too.
Data from the Orion flight test—recorded at much higher rates than the normal 1-Hz used operationally so engineers can pinpoint the changes in loads and other factors during the flight—will be used to validate models and improve designs.
Dubbed Project Loon, the fleet of balloons would be carried by winds some 18 to 20 km above the Earth – higher than commercial airlines and weather – and powered by solar panels.
NASA’s new Orion crew capsule flew its first test in space with clocklike precision Friday, using two unmanned orbits that took it deeper into space than any human spacecraft has gone since Apollo 17, and then achieved a bull’s-eye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Humans will be noticeably absent from the NASA/Lockheed Martin Exploration Flight Test-1 Orion capsule as it embarks on its first spaceflight, a two-orbit test mission that will include a searing descent through the Earth's atmosphere.
The printer serves as a prototype for a space additive-manufacturing capability that may one day become an essential part of NASA’s toolkit for human deep-space exploration.
India’s newest Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle is perched on the launch pad at Sriharikota Island in the Bay of Bengal, weeks away from its first experimental flight.
India’s space program has ambitious goals, including new missions to the Moon and Mars, and improved Earth-observation, communications and GPS capabilities
Deep space is the ultimate focus of Exploration Flight Test-1, because the Orion capsule is the vehicle that will keep crew members alive during some of the most dynamic minutes of missions to the “proving ground,” around the Moon and, ultimately Mars.
Japan is scheduled to launch Hayabusa-2 on a six-year mission to return samples from the asteroid 1999 JU3. Four landers are designed to explore the C-type asteroid’s surface before the main spacecraft itself touches down for two or three grab-and-go sample harvests.
